* Registration is restricted to Master of Heritage Conservation students or those without previous Architectural Design background*
This course is aimed to expose graduate students in the Heritage Conservation discipline to the foundational ideas and basic skills of urban design and place-making.
Specifically this course will overview some of the most dominant theories of urban design as well as their immersive relationship with various graphic means of representing a designed landscape and/or place.
Using the USC campus as study area, this course will teach students to read the built environment as a physical setting of identifiable elements each having specific dimensions and characteristics, and their combination into complex larger wholes.
Finally, this course will engage students in design exercises involving strategic thinking on what to preserve, what to change and what to introduce new and why.
The specific goals of this course are as follows:
Create awareness on various contemporary positions and lenses for reading the built environment.
Develop a basic understanding of the physical components of the urban landscape and their dimensional characteristics – from the scale of the region to that of a street.
Develop a basic understanding of how to represent in two and three-dimensions, the basic physical components of an urban landscape – from trees to building typologies – and how to depict them.
Engage in basic place-making exercises that analyze conditions towards proposing transformation and change.

Related Courses

507

Theories of Computer Technology

Theories of Computer Technology

Building information modeling (BIM) is one of the hottest topics in the architecture / engineering / construction profession (AEC) today. Learn what it is (3d parametric modeling), common software tools (this class concentrates primarily on Revit Architecture and some Navisworks), how it relates to sustainable design issues (Vasari and Green Building Studio), and why it is useful to the AEC industry (including being able to create awesome adaptive components!). Although offered in the School of Architecture, the techniques taught are equally applicable to others with an interest in the applications of BIM. Building science majors, structural engineering students, construction management students, and others are strongly encouraged to enroll. It is assumed that students already have a basic understanding of 2D CAD and 3D digital modeling.

Heritage conservation (a/k/a historic preservation) is a multi-disciplinary and far-reaching field that has evolved steadily and dramatically over the decades. Explore a range of subjects and issues that affect contemporary heritage conservation practice, including its historical and philosophical underpinnings, the role of government and individuals in identifying and protecting historic resources, and the field’s political, legal, economic, social, cultural and technical dimensions.

No matter your exact title, institution, training and special skills, whether architect, planner, or elected official, you will act in some capacity as manager, planner, and policy maker for historic sites and buildings. As a conservation professional, you will be expected to have a basic understanding of scholarly research; interpretation; design and aesthetics; materials conservation; public policy and land use law; real estate; and community planning. As such, this course will serve as an overview of the aspects of heritage conservation related to policy and planning.

Recommended preparation: ARCH 549
The physical fabric of historic structures is a tangible record connecting us directly to the people and events that shaped both our past and the future. Materials conservation requires a basic knowledge of material properties and behavior and involves many techniques, from research and building forensics to testing and implementation. This course will examine the characteristics and treatments for the most commonly used building materials and the application of heritage conservation criteria. Students will play an integral role in the materials analysis of a historic property.

Explore new ways of observing and thinking about the built environment through practical applications of documentation methods and fieldwork exercises. Learn the various techniques employed in the field of heritage conservation for recording and documenting historic resources, including methods of architectural classification such as historic resources surveys; National Register, California Register, and local registration standards; photographic documentation; historic structure reports and cultural landscape reports; and HABS/HAER documentation.

Architecture 553 examines the impact of politics, culture and the environment on the evolution of American architectural and urban forms from prehistory to World War II. The class explores the interchange between European architectural theory and indigenous and vernacular influences as they came together to create new national and regional forms of building and urban design. While generally chronological in presentation, lectures also examine a series of case studies in order to more closely explore the complexity of form and meaning in the American landscape.

Professional heritage conservationists, architects, architectural historians, and planners deal with managing cultural resources every day, yet very few of us have a working knowledge of the archaeological resources lying beneath our feet. The all-too-common result is the unwitting dismissal of, and often the outright destruction of, irreplaceable cultural resources. This course provides an introduction to the field of archaeology as it is currently practiced in the U.S., with a particular emphasis on helping non-archaeologists become better stewards of our collective heritage. It will present a brief overview of North American prehistory and history; survey past and present archaeological theory, methods, and research goals; and investigate how the discipline is situated within the larger field of heritage conservation. Our exploration of archaeological fundamentals, from legal contexts to artifact description, will culminate in the field documentation of a surface archaeological site; this weekend field trip is a required element of the course.

Why do some historic house museums thrive while others struggle from one crisis to the next? With nearly five decades of successful operation, the Gamble House in Pasadena will serve as the paradigm for understanding practical strategies to identify, develop and manage viable historic sites. If you anticipate a career in historic site management or a related field you will need to be familiar with developing a mission statement, interpretative programming, conservation issues, visitor infrastructure, funding strategies, volunteers, membership, public relations, budgeting, retail sales, collections management, and other important operational concerns. Course sessions will take place at the Gamble House in Pasadena, in addition to selected historic houses nearby.

Assessing historic buildings, sites, neighborhoods, and landscapes within their historic contexts forms the foundation of contemporary heritage conservation practice. Through lectures and fieldwork, this course will examine the tools required for assessment including research, writing historic contexts, understanding the vocabulary of the region’s architecture, assessing architectural character and integrity, utilizing state-of-the-art data collection techniques, basic architectural photography, and other best practices. As a non-design based studio course, students will be responsible for research and fieldwork to craft a cohesive survey evaluation of the area of study selected for each semester, in addition to a community presentation of their findings.

The definitions, efforts and efficacies of heritage conservation are inherent to and shaped by the social, political and economic cultures of a place. In many societies outside the Western world, the strategies that underlie the success of heritage conservation efforts are therefore significantly different than those typically pursued in Europe and the United States. Extreme economic disparities, ethnic and religious diversity and ad hoc, illegal possession and appropriation of historic sites surface the need for bottom-up instead of top-down strategies, self-help mechanisms and populist grassroots efforts as methods and tools. Additionally, the multi-generational presence of unconventional habitat types such as squatters, slums, urban villages and refugee camps, also raise complex questions on what constitutes heritage and how and why we need to conserve them.
The course will introduce students to the issues and challenges surrounding the idea of heritage conservation beyond the Euro-American world. It will specifically aim at provoking discussions on the nexus of heritage conservation, socio-economic inclusiveness and social justice by focusing on selected case studies that highlight the dilemmas of these other worlds.

Prerequisite(s): ARCH 549
Not everyone views the historic built environment through the same lens. Heritage conservation is inherently multi-disciplinary and strategies and implementation can vary widely in various regions across the United States and around the world. In order to have a more complete intellectual grounding in the field, students will read and critically discuss seminal works related to urban planning, architecture, history (local, public, cultural, architectural, etc.), landscape, archeology, history, law, public policy, cultural studies, and American studies.

Explore the intersection between the heritage conservation and green building movements, both of which contribute to sustainable development. Heritage conservation promotes the ethos of stewardship; defining what is significant about the built environment; methods of extending the service-life of buildings; the value of maintenance and repair; and effective means for adaptively re-using buildings.
Green building promotes holistic design; responds to the urgency of climate change and the need to reduce greenhouse gases; and encourages us to look at new systems and technology. By exploring the a variety of approaches to conserving the built and natural environments, students will be able to identify and differentiate between methods for assessing sustainability, develop appropriate metrics, apply evaluation tools, and determine appropriate treatments to improve projects.

* Registration is restricted to Master of Heritage Conservation students or those without previous Architectural Design background*
This course is aimed to expose graduate students in the Heritage Conservation discipline to the foundational ideas and basic skills of urban design and place-making.
Specifically this course will overview some of the most dominant theories of urban design as well as their immersive relationship with various graphic means of representing a designed landscape and/or place.
Using the USC campus as study area, this course will teach students to read the built environment as a physical setting of identifiable elements each having specific dimensions and characteristics, and their combination into complex larger wholes.
Finally, this course will engage students in design exercises involving strategic thinking on what to preserve, what to change and what to introduce new and why.
The specific goals of this course are as follows:
Create awareness on various contemporary positions and lenses for reading the built environment.
Develop a basic understanding of the physical components of the urban landscape and their dimensional characteristics – from the scale of the region to that of a street.
Develop a basic understanding of how to represent in two and three-dimensions, the basic physical components of an urban landscape – from trees to building typologies – and how to depict them.
Engage in basic place-making exercises that analyze conditions towards proposing transformation and change.

Prerequisite(s): ARCH 549
Introduction to, and exploration of, topics leading to the development of a thesis prospectus and directed research towards the completion of the master’s thesis in heritage conservation. Credit on acceptance of thesis. Registration restricted to Master of Heritage Conservation students who have satisfactorily completed 12 hours of graduate course work and have permission of the Program Director. Graded IP/CR/NC.

Prerequisite(s): ARCH 549
Introduction to, and exploration of, topics leading to the development of a thesis prospectus and directed research towards the completion of the master’s thesis in heritage conservation. Credit on acceptance of thesis. Registration restricted to Master of Heritage Conservation students who have satisfactorily completed 12 hours of graduate course work and have permission of the Program Director. Graded IP/CR/NC.